


Paint The Town Green

by gisho



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Crossdressing, Minor Character Death, Pre-Canon, Warning: Canon-Typical Violence, What Happened In Paris
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-10-02 00:16:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20444942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gisho/pseuds/gisho
Summary: Someone's been selling smuggled, exploding chemicals in Paris - chemicals that aren't supposed to explode, that is. Gil has a plan to stop them. So does Tarvek. Now if only they had thesameplan, or weren't trying them on the same night ...





	Paint The Town Green

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChuckTaylorUpset](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChuckTaylorUpset/gifts).

\--

The Cask of Port was a club that catered to a very particular clientele. People who valued discretion and privacy. People who didn't always play by the rules of everyday society. 

In other words, pirates.

But its reputation for discretion and tolerance meant it attracted people who wielded the cutlass in a more euphemistic sense, as well, and that was how Tarvek planned to infiltrate it. No one would pay much attention to one more _lady of fashion_, to use another euphemism, even if he was too old now to make a convincing woman; under the makeup no one would get a good look at his face. There was the little problem of _getting_ the makeup, but Xersephnia left her dressing room practically unlocked. There had to be some advantages to sharing a house with a girl of thirteen.

And so, at nine on a rainy Thursday evening when he should have been reading for next week's metahistory seminar, Tarvek hopped down from the taxicab he'd taken from an anonymous corner on the Rue des Grenouilles and sauntered up to the Cask of Port's doorway, swaying his hips just a little to make the silver piping on his corset catch the light from the skull-shaped lamps.

The doorkeeper raised an appreciative eyebrow as Tarvek stepped into the entryway, but still held up a massive paw. "Password, ma'am?"

"Fifth-of-Talisker." It came out a little huskier than his normal voice, just in case anyone who knew him was around tonight. 

"Welcome to the Cask of Port." The doorkeeper made a half-bow as he swept open the thick wooden door, which brought his head almost down to two meters.

Down the stairs, behind the submarine door, was the warm swirl of noise Tarvek had expected. If there was another exit it was probably behind the door marked 'Danger, Employees Only'. The lighting was no brighter than most taverns despite its modernity, newfangled electric bulbs dangling from the old wooden rafters, hanging over tables crowded with drinkers in a riot of colors, styles more absurd than modern. A taxidermied oarfish hung sinuous over the bar. On the stage at the' other end of the vast room, another lady-of-fashion, in a puff-sleeved green gown that almost disguised her broad shoulders, was somehow managing to croon _Sir Patrick Spens_. Along both walls were high-sided booths for private conversation. He wasn't going to get away with just listening. He'd have to ask questions. 

Well, start with an easy one. He swayed to the bar, put on his best lipsticked longing look, and asked, "Do you have red wine here?"

\--

The Cask of Port wasn't one of Gil's usual haunts. He stuck to the scientific clubs, as a rule. But the few rumours he'd been able to trace agreed that the tainted _élan lumineux_ was sold there, and Colette, surprising him less than it should have, knew the password. So he put on an embroidered waistcoast that fit a little too tight, borrowed Zola's perfume, and headed to the docks to nose around.

It was past nine and the only seat left at the bar was between a lady-of-fashion with long black hair, and a curly-haired probably-pirate with one clank hand. Gil slid into it, and turned to beam at the probably-pirate while the bartender poured a shot for a tattooed blonde. "What's that you're drinking? Looks tasty."

"Fairy Queen. Just invented in London."

He'd guessed that much, from the green iridescence, but he was here to make conversation. "Oh? You come from there?"

"Not hardly. Danish run's not so stormy." They snorted. "I should warn ye, if you're trying to plumb my deeps, my girlfriend won't look too kindly on it."

"Oh, no, just curious. Fairy Queen, please," he added to the bartender, and then turned back to the pirate. "I've never been to Denmark. Or London."

"Don't bother with London. Too many forms to smuggle anything." The pirate looked him up and down. "Unless you're not in that line of business?" they added, suddenly smirking.  
The blush spreading over Gil's face, he told himself, added verisimilitude. 

From his other side the lady-of-fashion drawled, "He's just here for the fresh meat, I think." The voice sounded distantly familiar, and Gil would have tried to remember where he'd heard it before if he weren't so busy with the urge to melt into his barstool. 

It made the pirate laugh. "I think he's a vegetarian."

"I'm really just here for a drink," Gil protested. By some mercy it didn't come out a squeak. "And a little shopping."

"Oh-ho-_ho_. Can I interest you in some quality China tea?"

"Something a little more specialized, actually." He cleared his throat. It was going better than he'd dared hope. "Something - alchemical. I heard you can get very good prices here? If you talk to the right people?" It was almost unbelievably guileless and naive to just ask like that, but everyone loved a sucker. 

Including, apparently, his piratical friend. "Oh, you can get it _wholesale_ here. But there's a few people who could do you a little deal. How much are you thinking? Private lab?"

"Well. Yes. No more than I can carry home." He hopefully flexed an arm and grinned. Behind him the lady-of-fashion was snorting into her red wine.

"Aye, it's Miss Harlow you'll be wanting the lady in green, over there under the flock of parakeets. And I'll be having another of these, and he'll be paying," the pirate added, as the bartender hurried back over with Gil's Fairy Queen. 

He mumbled his thanks and slid a franc note, which should cover two fancy drinks and a hearty tip, over the bar before he took a sip. The bartender, who wore a smile that on her dusky face reminded him too much of Dupree, didn't move away; apparently she wanted to watch the fireworks.

The Fairy Queen tasted creamy and a little sharp, and the spicy under-taste went right to his sinuses. It was exhilarating. He could drink these all night. He might have to. He coughed anyway, just for the show of it, and the lady-of-fashion slapped him between the shoulderblades. Gil straightened up and grinned. "If they drink like this in London maybe I should nip across the channel," he informed the pirate, who was blinking in astonishment.

\--

Of course Holzfäller had turned up. He had that knack. He was like a cat. Tarvek wanted to bury his face in his hands, but it would have smeared his makeup. Instead he listened while Holzfäller took not three minutes to do what Tarvek hadn't managed in fifteen, and wished he had an excuse to dump his drink all over the man. Sopping wet shirt would go nicely with the too-tight waistcoat. Surely Gil hadn't been quite that tall and well-built during their first class together? When exactly had he hit a growth spurt? 

"If they drank like you in London they'd have decided it would be jolly good fun to open the airlocks and drowned by now," he said. "You don't have to swallow it all in one go."

"Where's the fun in that?" Gil took a second gulp and grinned as if he didn't have a care in the world. He nodded at the pirate sitting on his other side. "Thanks for the tip," he offered, and somehow managed to spin his barstool around at high speed without sloshing his drink all over the floor.

Only one thing to do. Tarvek pushed away the dregs of his glass and followed.

They were ten steps away before Gil must have felt his presence and stopped still, shoulders going stiff. "Why are you following me?" he asked, quiet enough that the six leather-clad people at the next table, cheering each other's dice rolls indiscriminately, would have found it hard to hear.

Just in case, Tarvek leaned in close, pressed a hand to Holzfäller's muscular bicep and lips to the curve of his oversized ear, and whispered, "If you go shopping alone you'll look like a Sûreté spy. I'm your date." Had the man bathed in perfume before he went out? Somehow Tarvek managed not to sneeze.

"That's awfully nice of you, miss ..."

He sounded dreadfully suspicious, for which Tarvek blamed him not a bit. "T - Tinka." He added a nibble on Gil's ear, for the sake of leaving a lipstick smear, and watched the blush spread down his neck with vicious satisfaction.

\--

Well, he would have been convinced Miss Tinka was a spy, but the nibble seemed genuinely. Er. Friendly. Sometimes girls did strange things like that, around him. It wasn't absurd a man might. Gil tried to fight back his blush and mostly managed it, by stepping back to get a better look at her in case he remembered where he'd seen her before. She had a long black wig, pale skin beneath thick makeup, and wore a flowing red gown under a corset with silver buttons. The overall effect was somewhere between 'elegant' and 'vampire', downright conservative by Cask-of-Port standards. Her hands were perched on her hips and she gave them a little - there was no other word for it - slither. "Don't tell me you only like big hairy men."

"Uh. No? This is fine?" Why was he hesitating? If she was an enemy Gil should keep her close. "Come on, let's go shopping."

There was a tall pale man, face a crisscross of scars, just sliding out of Miss Harlow's booth. They slid in. Somehow Miss Tinka arranged to have the outside seat. Miss Harlow was a tiny dark woman in a dress that wouldn't have been out of place on a bank teller, except for the green-and-yellow stripes; she barely looked up from the pack of cards she was riffling through. "Buying or selling?"

"Buying," Gil offered, trying to split the difference between cheery and subtle. This was going better than he'd expected. "Alchemical supplies. Just a little."

That got an even nod. "To be specific?"

"Five litres of _élan lumineux_, two of Roenter's medium, and a half-kilo each of red sulphur, borzoite, and powdered Dover chalk." All but the first of those were pure improvisation. He bit his lip and swished his drink as if he were nervous. "And I'll want to test the _élan_. I've heard there are bad batches going around."

"And where would you have heard a scurrilous rumour like that?" Miss Harlow slapped her deck down on the table. Tinka's hand closed on his knee; she must have been leaning closer than he realized. 

"From just behind the lab door, luckily for my skin," Gil lied in a tone of flat annoyance. "No test, no sale. I'm not buying any more beakers this term."

Miss Harlow snorted. "Should have been keeping an eye on the reaction."

"Kept my eyes. Look, can you do better or do I need to go back to Madame Millefleur's?"

"No, don't do that." She actually sounded alarmed. "You seem like a nice young man. I'd rather you stayed in one piece and became a regular customer. Speaking of which -" she flipped a five and a jack onto the table, without glancing at her cards first. Nice trick. "Cash in advance."

It was a suspiciously round price and Gil was tempted to haggle, but he didn't want to spook her. The price was still decent. He hissed in annoyance and shoved the bills over the table. 

"I'll have to send a runner for the powders," Miss Harlow said, running her fingers over each bill with the same neat efficiency of motion she'd riffled the cards with. "But you can run your test while he's gone." She made the bills vanish, produced the King of Clubs, and waved it in the air like a man hailing a cab.

Tinka sighed happily and leaned a little closer to Gil's shoulder. "Pleasure doing business with a real professional," she cooed. 

Three minutes later the runner had been dispatched, and the pale young man in sparkly eyeshadow who'd appeared when Miss Harlow waved was leading them through the 'Danger, Employees Only' door. Tinka kept a hand on Gil's elbow as they made their way down a dark hall thick with old graffiti, through another door, down the kind of creaking metal steps that gave the impression people had been thrown down them more than once, and finally into a store-room that must, Gil realized as he replayed their route in his head, be almost under the Cask-of-Port stage. Their guide fiddled with something beside the doorframe, and a second later the lantern sprung to life, turning the piled-up casks yellow. 

Gil would have loved to be left alone in here with a portable analysis kit. But not without an escape route. 

He drained the last of his Fairy Queen while Tinka shoved past him, gasping in horror at a green salmanzar bottle perched atop a stack of crates. She swept up a handful of her dangling sleeve to shove it further back. "You keep chemicals piled up like this? Havn't you people ever heard of insulation racks? Or safe separation distance, not that I can tell if that applies because none of this is labelled." She sounded utterly scandalized, and still oddly familiar. 

Their guide shrugged. "No explosions yet." He began pulling empty litre flasks out of a crate by the wall, holding each one up to the light to check for cracks.

Tinka had her arms crossed, glaring like a cook who'd just found something wriggling in her soup. "You're lucky."

"Maybe so." The second of the opaque carboys against the far wall already had an autosiphon through its stopper; they must get plenty of retail customers. The guide pushed it into the first flask and it glooped to life. Gil watched with a fascination he'd never quite managed to shake as the faintly-glowing elixir filled up the flask. It was only twenty seconds before he flipped the valve shut and held out the flask; all the activity had left its contents a bilious green that added strange shadows to their faces. "Still want a purity test?"

"Well, I want to be sure there's nothing else in there." Gil tried for a disarming grin as he took it.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise that somehow Tinka had gotten hold of his empty Fairy Queen glass, or that she was slipping the flask from his nerveless fingers. She dribbled out a finger-width. It turned bright yellow as she swirled it. Tinka nodded, satisfied, and made a loupemeter and a tiny perfume bottle appear; the loupemeter she pressed to her eye like a monocle, and the perfume bottle she dribbled into the cup. She must have been planning to buy herself, if she'd brought the right reagents for a purity test. Gil wanted to ask if she was using Mikelov's new catalyst, but they were supposed to be here together and he didn't want to admit ignorance.

Then it exploded.

Gil's instinct to grab Tinka and shield her from the blast kicked in before his conscious mind could go over the possible causes of the explosion and conclude Tinka must have been responsible; none of the common adulterations of _élan lumineux_ would explode without heating. But he still had her pressed against the wall, trying to keep her out of the way of any secondary explosions, and their guide was screaming in pain or anger, Gil couldn't tell which, and then Tinka drove her fist into his stomach and this had been a terrible idea, hadn't it? But she grabbed his wrist before he could do more than stumble a step backwards and yelled, "Come _on_, Holzfäller," and then they were rushing out into the hallway, stumbling down it, further away from the Cask of Port. 

They were half of what would have been a block on the surface away before the secondary explosion. This one was bigger. Gil's ears rang with it. He ducked automatically into a sheltered doorway, yanking Tinka with him, and listened to the sounds of yelling and creaking wood. 

She'd called him by name. Something finally clicked together in his brain, and he blinked at his companion, trying to convince himself he was wrong, but the build and skin tone were right, and the chemical knowledge to set off the explosion. "Sturmvoraus?"

"Quiet!" And now he wasn't bothering to disguise his voice.

"What are you doing here?"

"The same thing you are, but with considerably more style." Sturmvoraus tossed his head. "Are we going to run, or stand here and let them catch us?"

Right, they had to assume there'd be pursuit, at least once their erstwhile guide started yelling. Gil tightened his grip on Tarvek's wrist and took off again.

They took the next few turns at random. The dim hallway gave way to a low stone cellar with a thicket of massive wooden casks they ducked through like they were dodging deathrays. Then another stone passageway, and another, each one different - some as dark and quiet as if they were running through a disused basement, some with glowing gas lamps and signs up proclaiming the owners of doors, for the benefit, Gil guessed, of the dustmen who must come through here to collect the piled cans. They passed a fat man in an apron tipping out a basket of vegetable leavings; he gaped at them. They turned a corner and now there were wooden beams with lamps hanging down every few meters, windows and brightly-painted doors, with hanging signs - "Dark Secret Coffee", "Dr. Aimee Fenice, Retrophrenologist", "Antiques!!!!". 

This hallway was wide enough to drive a cart down and there were people wandering down it, mostly with the furtive, rumpled look of office workers who'd stopped by the bar for a few too many. Gil replayed their route in his head. They'd been getting steadily further from the docks, and now they were almost to the Black Market. He slowed down to a brisk walk, and let his hand slip until he was properly holding hands with Ti - Tarvek. No point acting memorable here. 

Sturmvoraus didn't protest; he pressed close to Gil's side as if they were just a young couple out for a late stroll. On their way to a club, maybe. "That could have gone worse," he said, head tipped onto Gil's shoulder. 

Gil took a deep breath. "Inasmuch as we're not _dead_. What was that all about? You don't usually like to blow things up." 

"It's not usually the smart option. However much you seem to prefer it. Look, maybe we shouldn't be talking this over on the street." He'd switched to Russian, but it wasn't as if nobody else in Paris spoke Russian. 

And whatever the sneak was planning, Gil stood a better chance of finding it out by sticking close and talking to him. Maybe they really were on the same side. 

\--

The Black Market was crowded enough to be private, past nine, but apparently Holzfäller was in a paranoid mood; he dragged Tarvek through the streets until they could duck into another maintenance tunnel, this one thick with steam pipes that left the air the texture of a bath with too many salts in it, despite the insulation. Hopefully this would be a short talk, or his makeup was going to run. Maybe, he thought bitterly, Gil would be inspired to take his shirt off. At least he'd get something worthwhile out of the encounter that way. 

But Gil just leaned against Valve Panel #7804 and crossed his arms. "Alright. Out with it. Were you actually trying to collapse the Cask of Port stage or was that just a side effect?" 

"I was trying," Tarvek hissed through gritted teeth, "to make a loud enough explosion and destroy enough stock that the alchemical supplies business there has its reputation dragged through the mud and trampled on. Why, were you actually attempting subtlety?" 

"Yes! The Master just wanted enough information to know who to shut down!" 

Tarvek closed his eyes for a moment and rubbed his temples. He missed his glasses. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but sometimes it's best to blow up everything and let Fate sort it out." 

Gil opened his mouth. Closed it again. Narrowed his eyes. "Why do you care if there's tainted _élan lumineux_ spreading all over Paris? You wouldn't get caught out. I've watched you do litmus tests on bottles out of the undergraduate lab stores." 

"Where anyone could have gotten into them, yes," Tarvek snapped. He'd seen Holzfäller try to identify chemicals by taste. The man did not have the moral high ground on lab safety. "Do you really think this is an appropriate matter to leave to the Master's whimsies?" 

"Judgement. Yes. He knows exactly how important it is, but he also knows how much smuggling to overlook, because it's better to have these things where you can keep an eye on them. I don't know how much damage you just did to his economic controls." Gil tilted his head. "And I know you didn't just happen to tag along when I interrupted your night out. You had the catalysts ready." 

"Like I said. Some things it's better just to blow up." What would infuriate the man the most? Oh, right, this one was obvious. Tarvek smirked. "Thank you for your little naive-student act back there, by the way. I couldn't have done it without you." 

It made Holzfäller twitch, at least, if not explode. "Except you didn't even get the right smuggler!" 

"And exactly what meagre scrap of evidence do you have for that assertion?" 

"You did the damn purity test yourself, weren't you watching? That was perfectly good _élan lumineux_ \- " 

"That was pure polyhydroxide, you blithering imbecile. All I wanted was the exothermic reaction." 

"Oh." That much really should have been obvious, and now Holzfäller was flushed with embarrassment, or possibly just with heat. 

It was hard to think in here. As if the drive home the point one of the pipes gave a threatening bang and then began to hum. Tarvek took a deep breath; he would have fiddled with his glasses, but they were hidden in his corset, and touching his face right now would absolutely leave smears. There was something he should be noticing, something not quite right, he just had to think - 

"Are you okay?"

Tarvek held up a hand. "Thinking. Give me a minute." 

Gratifyingly, Holzfäller shut up. 

And now he had it. "You're right," he admitted. "But for the wrong reason. Miss Harlow agreed to the test too quickly. If she were selling tainted product she'd have been offended long enough to figure out if it was a catalyst she could beat, but she didn't even ask. Were you just going down a list, or did you have good reason to think she was the seller?" Tarvek had always meant to leave a trail of explosions, but he'd started with the source he thought was most likely, and now he felt very stupid for why. 

"Adequate reason. To investigate. Which was all I was trying to do." Gil crossed his arms. He was starting to sweat; Tarvek could see his cheeks gleaming in the inadequate safety light. "Old lab assistant of the last chemist who died thought she'd been buying from there. And half of Professora Slein's department. Just rumours." 

"In other words," Tarvek couldn't quite keep from hissing, "someone's been trying to drive a competitor out of business. Who was it you threatened to go back to that had Miss Harlow so upset? Madame Millefleur?"

With a suspiciously deliberate cough, Gil looked at the ceiling. "Well, you did a fine job of the driving." 

"Oh, we're not finished yet." 

With a tiny buzz, barely audible over the noise of rushing water, the emergency light blew out. 

Tarvek was still silently fuming when he heard a soft thump and felt a hand on his shoulder. "You there?" Apparently Holzfäller shared the universal instinct to speak quietly in darkness, but it didn't really matter with his breath that close to Tarvek's ear and dammit, was this some kind of payback for nibbling him at the Cask of Port? He acknowledged his presence by grabbing at Gil's wrist before the idiot could try checking to see how far down the neckline on his gown went. "Are you saying you want to go after Millefleur tonight?" 

"Why wait? If we get there soon enough we might beat the rumour mill about the Cask of Port. Or she'll be too confused working out why her scurrilous rumours came true." It was pointless in the dark, but Tarvek indulged in a very nasty grin. "What do you say? Shall we go paint the town red?" 

"Green," Holzfäller said. "It's green when it comes out of the casks." 

"It's a metaphor, Holzfäller." 

\--

Tarvek had, of course, brought a comb. And of course, he insisted on stopping as soon as they ducked out of the steam tunnel to rearrange his wig and touch up his makeup. Gil found himself looking away. "Why are you dressed like that, anyway?"

"Because some of us have a reputation to keep up that _isn't_ 'reckless libertine'. Look at it this way, everyone at Madame Millefleur's will be so distracted by the lady-of-fashion they won't be able to describe you any further than _built like a brick - _" he drew it out, like he was making fun, but then abruptly concluded, "_ \- wall._ Trust me."

After all the stunts he'd seen Sturmvoraus pull that was a tall order. On the other hand, he had a point about moving fast. "Fine. Where is she tonight, since you know so much?"

"Le Manchot D'Or."

Dammit, he was right. "That's halfway across the city. Right near your mansion, isn't it? Do you want to go by my place and switch disguises? It wouldn't be that much out of the way."

"It's hardly necessary. My own grandmother wouldn't recognize me in this getup."

There was something barbed in his words, and Gil didn't want to tread on whatever bruise those barbs were defending. Maybe tonight Tarvek had gone out with his perfume bottle of polyhydroxide to go hunting, but maybe Miss Tinka had made other appearances in other clubs. It would explain why Sturmvoraus got so snappy when people in the investigation societies asked about his weekend plans. 

Well - maybe his family was old-fashioned about that sort of thing. It was really none of Gil's business.

Or maybe Miss Tinka was a one-night-only creation, and Sturmvoraus was just an untrustworthy sneak, and Gil had no reason to trust him further than it would take to get rid of Madame Millefleur. It would be more in keeping with the weasel's personality.

Sturmvoraus was busily making the comb vanish, and the lipstick, and the powder compact. He must have some impressively commodious pockets in that gown. "Are you running straight to your precious Master afterwards, or can you help me take out Abbey Hall?"

"No, I'll stick around. Uh." He ran through his mental map of the city. Where was far enough from Le Manchot to be anonymous, but close enough not to waste half the night running? Well - the trains would still be running. "We can meet up at the Screwdriver Café outside Blind Eos?"

"It's a date."

Gil tried to think of a way to protest that it wasn't a date, and then gave up and shut his mouth.

\--

Le Manchot d'Or was the furthest thing from _upscale_ on its block; the district had grown fashionable around it, and only the owner's close connections with the piratical trade and the resulting pieces-off-the-top had kept such a tarnished cabaret open while its neighbours turned into perfumeries and experimental gastrariums. Fortunately for Tarvek, their strained good fortune had never stretched to electric lighting, or a non-alcoholic doorman. The slurred 'Madam' as he handed over his cover charge seemed perfectly sincere.

He'd been here before, as himself - well, in a much less convincing disguise - last winter, when Seffie had begged for some company for a night on the town. It didn't look as if the place had gotten a good scrubbing since. Tarvek ignored the stage, where three women dressed in so many sequins and feathers the lack of actual cloth was hardly scandalous were doing an enthusiastic dance with high kicks, and made his way past the row of high tables in back. Holzfäller was in place already, perched on the last tall chair at the corner, having for once managed to tone down his enthusiastic personality in favour of quietly sipping a watered-down gin-and-tonic and apparently ignoring everything but the dancers. Tarvek reached out without looking and slapped his backside. That should get his attention.

It wasn't a very good plan. No plan that relied on Holzfäller sneaking around unseen while Tarvek was a loud, distracting centre of attention could be very good; this was a job for a Smoke Knight. But Holzfäller was the tool at hand. Still a better plan than the one where he demonstrated his skills in front of Holzfäller. 

The stairs to the balcony creaked and groaned. He let them.

Madame Millefleur's box was guarded by a hulking construct with a furred left arm like a bear's, which either was a fake with a human arm structure underneath or couldn't be used without tearing her chest muscles, and an imposing greenglass blaster, which might be an actual problem. Tarvek swayed up to her like someone with an appointment. "I'm here to speak with Madame Millefleur."

"Not expected," the guard growled.

Tarvek lowered his eyes, the better to show off his glittery silver eyeshadow, and slipped the blaster power core into his pocket. "No. But I'm looking to buy in bulk. Does she have have a few minutes? If she's too busy I'm sure I could get something from Harlow instead." There. Very blatant, namedropping the competition like that, but he wasn't here to be _subtle_. 

After a few seconds in which she must have been going over her orders in her head, the guard muttered, "You wait here," and vanished through the thick green curtains into Madame Millefleur's box.

Tarvek resisted the urge to tap his toes. Instead he leaned against the wall, as if his feet hurt from standing too long. 

It only took thirty seconds before the guard re-emerged, looking no less gruff. "Go in."

"_Thank_ you," Tarvek told her with a simpering smile, just on the off-chance, and slipped in.

Madame Millefleur's box was dark, the stage-side curtains drawn and two gaslamps in the shape of naked ladies holding torches casting an inadequate yellow glow over the scene. Two cosy armchairs had been rearranged around a tiny drinks table to face the entry; in the left one Millefleur herself perched, looking gaunt and pale behind her blue velvet dress, like a bad knock-off version of his grandmother. Her hair was in the kind of complicated curls that only worked if you kept them up with petrifaction spray, which from the soft orange smell she did. Another construct, this one with a furred right arm, loomed beside her. The lady with the bear left arm stepped inside, between Tarvek and the way out. Interesting. He beamed.

"Good evening." Millefleur was smiling like a knife. Somewhere down below he could hear the dance music changing tunes. "I don't believe we've been introduced."

"Tinka Smythe, madam." Tarvek plucked at his gown as he made an old-fashioned curtsey. It was a surprisingly pleasant sensation how the skirt swished around his knees. He straightened up to the sudden cold press of a blaster muzzle against his spine. 

Oh. So that was how they were going to play it. Tarvek relaxed; this would be easier than he'd expected.

Millefleur's smile didn't waver. "I was told you had a business proposition for me, but somehow I doubt it."

"If you threaten your customers all the time it's no wonder you don't get business propositions." Maybe he was laying on the petulance too thick. No, someone who went for Millefleur's idea of intimidation wouldn't notice overacting. 

"Don't be coy, Miss Smythe. Who are you working for? You might still get out of here alive."

"The Society of Sons of Trismegistus," Tarvek improvised indignantly. "As I would have told you in twenty seconds if you'd only let me talk. What are you playing at?"

She ignored the question, of course, and Left Bear only responded by jabbing the blaster a little harder. "You can't expect me to believe that, Miss Smythe. Or whatever your real name is."

"Whyever not? Aren't you running a business here? I want nine hogsheads of _élan lumineux_, delivered, and I'm prepared to offer a bank draft on Pascal and Sons."

"You didn't offer a reference. I'm not running the sort of business that goes for passing trade. Abbey Hall? The Sûreté Scientifique? Any actual Brit wouldn't be treading on toes in Paris."

How had the woman lived long enough to get grey hair when she was so prone to grandstanding? There was no point in drawing this out. Tarvek drew his shoulders up, quivering with righteous annoyance, and then let out a yelp. He raised a hand to point at Right Bear, trembling. 

Right Bear got as far as reaching for her holster before she noticed the dagger sticking out of her bicep. She yelped too, and it fell into a florid curse, "_Sacre bleu, sacre bleu,_," repeated like a meditative mantra. Left Bear yanked up her blaster and pulled the trigger, which did nothing since Tarvek had pocketed her power core, but he appreciated that she was firing over his shoulder instead of into his spine. 

He dropped back against Left Bear as if someone had kicked him over, grabbing her belt to be sure they went down together, and took enough of a deep breath to scream, "_Smoke Knight!_"

"Smoke Knight?" She could bellow with the best of them; she threw him aside so fast it was practically a bounce, and kept futilely firing into the air. Tarvek landed in the corner with his skirt tangled up around his thighs. No one was paying him any attention, so he took the second dagger from his boot and tossed it at Madame Millefleur, who had gotten ahold of Right Bear's blaster and was randomly crisscrossing the room with shots. It was a miracle the curtains hadn't caught on fire yet. It landed with an unpleasant thwack in her side. There would have been little old ladies Tarvek was sorry to kill - most of them, really - but right now he was only worried she hadn't pulled the alarm first. He didn't even know what she used. 

But no, there was a pocket-watch on the table with the very distinctive bulge of a code-radio on the back. Right Bear had sensibly ducked out into the hallway. Left Bear dropped her useless blaster and leapt over the drinks table, catching at Millefleur as she sank back into the armchair, clutching her side. "Madame!"

The dramatic thing would be to pitch them over the balcony while they were distracted, but his angle was bad enough Tarvek doubted he could do it unnoticed. He rolled toward the door, some darkly humorous part of his brain pointing out he was showing as much leg in the process as the ladies on stage - the music was still, somehow, playing - and got to his knees, from where he could plunge a valneferin-coated needle into Left Bear's knee. Collateral damage wasn't very professional, after all, and she had declined to shoot him on spec.

Three seconds. People below were starting to yell, Tarvek could hear the thudding boots of the guards Millefleur had summoned from their storeroom posts on the code-radio, he had to get out of here. Left Bear was slumping over. He shoved her into the corner, grabbed Millefleur - still trying to say something, but with nothing but gurgles of blood coming up and her eyes glazed over - by the armpits, and threw her through the curtains to plummet down onto the audience tables. He hadn't aimed, but from the wooden thud and tinkle of breaking glass he'd hit one dead-on. 

If that wasn't distracting enough these weren't customers, they were dance-watching clanks. The music ground to a toneless stop as whoever was running the harmonium gave up. 

Tarvek leapt up to the balcony rail, glad he'd worn the right boots even if they were odd boots for a lady-of-fashion, and grabbed the light fixture to swing into the next box.

He knocked over its drinks table landing. The man who'd been cowering under it - fair enough, those blaster shots had been thoroughly indiscriminate - lifted his arms from around his head just enough to look confused. He was, luckily, nobody Tarvek had ever seen before, although the fashionable double-collared suitjacket and the oiled beard suggested money. He hadn't stopped to do up his trousers before he hid. Tarvek resisted the urge to kick him in the very tempting target, just to relieve a little stress, and stalked out of the room, throwing his long black hair over his shoulder. The man was probably so drunk he'd dismiss the whole thing as a hallucination.

\--

By the time the mass screaming started downstairs Gil was busy breaking the lock on Millefleur's storeroom. He hadn't even needed to hide; they blew past someone who looked like a lost customer without a second glance. Well, her door was locked, and locked well enough he spent twenty useless seconds trying to pry it open before giving up and driving the screwdriver right through the mechanism. His mind was already crackling on the edge of fugue. He didn't know what Tarvek was doing for a distraction, but it was certainly effective. 

This was one of six locations Millefleur used, so this wasn't all her stock. It was still an impressive collection. Tucked against one wall were bales of what smelled slightly like rosemary, and were presumably false-nepenthe, very tightly regulated in Paris ever since some bright spark developed a strain that looked and smelled like the normal variety but gave whoever took it gibbering hallucinations. Beside them stood a set of locked cabinets, and on the other wall were the alchemical supplies. Steel bottles with handwritten labels explaining the type of acid, bars of electrum just stacked in the open atop a big copper box, clear glass carboys with no label at all. None of them glowing, and the commotion downstairs they should be shaken up. Millefleur didn't keep her _élan lumineux_ here. Well, she did wholesale, it was probably in a hidden warehouse.

Gil was just going to have to improvise.

Those false-nepenthe bales looked awfully flammable. He didn't want to impede the evacuation, though; in fact to make sure he smashed open three bottles of aloric acid and poured them over the pile, which should denature them, or produce a nasty enough smoke to inspire hasty exits. The cabinets he busted open after a few seconds of thought; one held bundles of franc notes, and one a complicated gadget Gil would have loved to sit down with and analyse.

Later, he promised himself, and turned to the carboys. Something in here had to explode. The purplish liquid on the end, calmly glooping, was probably polyflouritide. If he catalysed it with - no, that wouldn't work, he didn't have a source of electricity here. Unless he wanted to build a battery, but that would take copper. What _resources_ did he have, could he take apart that box, this would take _tools_ \- He felt the sharp tension of the Spark taking hold of his mind, and it would never stop feeling good that he didn't need to fight it any longer.

Three minutes later - not enough time to truly warp the laws of physics, but plenty to improvise a bomb - he hurried out into the hallway, the complicated gadget clutched in his arms, because he had to get something out of tonight, dammit. There was a window down there that should overlook the alleyway and Gil wanted out. He sprinted for it, leaping up at the last minute to slam his boot into the edge. Better to pop the frame out completely than try to jump through glass; he'd learned that the hard way not a month after he came to Paris.

It flew out and landed somewhere below with a crash and Gil was already tucking himself around the gadget for the landing. 

He landed hard and early on what, he realized even as he went through it, was the canvas cover of a wagon. Fortunately, it was a laundry wagon, and the crumpled piles of what must be hotel sheets kept the funny angle from breaking anything. Huh. Satin sheets, too. He flailed around for a little bit until he could push his torso out of the pile - hopefully whoever was driving the thing hadn't noticed the pair of legs sticking out of their wagon cover - and managed to clamber back up, spreading his legs out so as not to fall through again. Oh, right, the gadget. He fished around until it came up, wrapped in a soft pink pillowcase. 

The wagon had stopped, halfway out of the alleyway. There was a a fuzzy knit watchcap sticking up over the edge of the cover, followed very shortly by a girl's face, big brown eyes wide. "Monsieur?" 

"So sorry," he managed. "Accident." 

"Where did you come from?" 

Oh dear, it must be about to blow. "Never mind that," he said, "just _drive_." 

Her eyes had gone narrow and angry, with the kind of righteous fury reserved for fifteen-year-olds who had had a long enough day already. "You think you can tell me what to do because you just fell out of the sky and break my wagon?" 

"Spark business, look, will you just - " 

There was a foomf somewhere above, and the alley turned bright orange. Gil only caught a glimpse of it, because the girl had dropped back down and slammed the velocicrank forward, and he almost slid backwards into the street from the acceleration. She swerved, she must be dodging something, and there was screaming in the street. Oh, good, distraction. The wagon made a turn so sharp it almost scraped the lamppost, and took off down the Rue Sulfureux as if it were trying to outrun an explosion, which Gil sincerely hoped wasn't the case, there had been enough explosions tonight, but he couldn't rule it out after a fugue. 

Five blocks later they pulled over to let the huge millstone shape of an fire clank roll past, brass nozzles gleaming. Gil exhaled. The Master of Paris did not mess around with public safety. The firefighters followed a few seconds later, clinging to their old-fashioned hexapede. 

When the noise of the hexapede's heavy feet had vanished into the tumult of yelling and crackling behind them Gil cautiously sat up. The driver was standing on her seat again, balancing with a hand against the cover and glaring at him. "Spark business," she said. "Spark business?" 

"Look, I'm very sorry about your wagon, I can pay for the repairs - " 

She burst into giggles, while Gil lay there trying to figure out what to say, clutching his pillowcase-wrapped gadget like a security blanket and feeling very young and stupid. 

The driver reached out and plucked something from his hair. "Is that what they call it these days. No problem about the wagon, we have chaos insurance." 

"Oh." He looked down at the lacy red brevi-pantaloons in her hand and found himself blushing. "Those aren't mine!" 

"I can tell. They wouldn't fit you." She dropped them on top his gadget. "You go find your girlfriend," a nod down the street toward the fire, where Gil confirmed with a glance that a crowd of people about the right size for the cabaret crowd was milling about while the fireclank sprayed foam in the third-story windows, "I have a delivery." 

"Right! Thank you, miss!" He scrambled down the side of the laundry wagon and fled, hoping his blush wasn't too conspicuous. 

\--

Blind Eos was just far enough that Gil had managed to reassemble his dignity by the time he stepped out of the Underground station. The gadget, which he'd stuffed in the pink pillowcase like a burglar fleeing with a bag of loot, rattled uncomfortably. Nobody so much as glanced at him. Just one more lad out for a night on the town. 

He looked around the plaza, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and gave a cheerful whistle. Two women who looked already drunk leaned against the honey tree railing, kissing lasciviously. A matronly lady in an oversized hat bustled past him, tossing out a rote apology as her skirts almost knocked him over. On the other side of the plaza three small boys were sitting atop the Poisson sign throwing peanut shells on the passers-by below, the waiters miraculously not having come out to chase them off yet, and the sight gave Gil such a distracting pang of nostalgia that he startled and almost fell over at the tap on his shoulder. 

Sturmvoraus was smirking, of course. He'd touched up his makeup, and his eyeshadow glittered. "They're called lamps, Holzfäller," he said. "The Master puts them up in caverns so people who work there can see." 

"You can't even say hello? You have to go straight to insulting my intelligence?" Gil scowled. The lamps here were very nice, they were very nice in most of the inhabited underground, and that had nothing to do with why he was meeting Sturmvoraus.

"No, but I do so love an easy target." Sturmvoraus rolled his eyes. "Is that loot? You seriously looted Millefleur's inventory on the way out?" 

"It was too interesting to let burn. I'll cloakroom it." He ran a hand through his hair, which never helped. "Did Millefleur get arrested or do we have to go destroy the rest of her warehouses? I mean, right now, we probably should later anyway, but if the Sûreté have an excuse to go hunting ..." He trailed off, because Tarvek was giving him a very strange sort of look, one that made his eyes look hollow and his lips half-open in what might have been a scowl. 

Then he sighed. "Don't worry, she's out of business for good. We can leave the rest."

"Oh. Good. Just Abbey Hall, then."

"They won't be open until eleven. I don't think we can get ahead of the rumours this time."

Gil glanced up at the station clock. "Maybe not," he said with a sudden burst of inspiration, "but if we take the next train we can get there before they open. Come on, I have an idea."

"Cloakroom first," Tarvek said, and pointed at the pillowcase. "You'll regret it if you break that thing knocking someone over with it."

\--

Tarvek was oddly dressed for a courier, so he must be delivering something very high-value in the big velvet handbag he'd borrowed from the lady on the train. He'd borrowed one of her gold feather hairclips, too, and unlaced the gown down to the corset, which made the handbag was as safe as a diplomatic pouch; no one dared attract the ire of the Cochette's Guild. The stiff-faced woman in vaguely military garb still gave him a deeply suspicious look. "We weren't expecting any special deliveries, ma'am."

Well, at least she was polite enough not to say _sir_. Tarvek crossed his arms and gave the universal scowl of the Put-upon Employee. "Of course not. They only yanked me off a party at the Blitzengaard place for this," which was a slander on his uncle but rumour said every rich idiot had the same vices, "it would be too much to hope they warned you before you had to sign for the stuff."

The guard grimaced. "Rush order?"

"Aren't they all? Midnight pickup, they said, barely done precipitating, they said, has to be a handbag job." He threw his hands up. "As if the Sûreté were checking parcels inside Paris. Nobody's stolen the crown of the Storm King lately."

The guard rolled her eyes. He could imagine what was going through her head, looking at this poor young man who must be desperate for money, to risk his membership in the Cochette's Guild with this kind of moonlighting work, whose life was being made more difficult by the same employers who were rude and demeaning to her. How much yelling she would have to endure if a rush job _wasn't_ there at midnight. "Alright," she said. "Come on in, you can put it in a safety locker."

Nice of her to offer after he'd been hauling it about in his handbag, even if it didn't technically exist. Nice to know Abbey Hall kept safety lockers, too, but with a dozen traders working out of the place who didn't get along well enough to share detailed inventories with each other, it was only sensible. Mistress Abbey had good sense. Tarvek spared a moment to be glad she'd been dead for years and wouldn't get to see the mess he was about to make of her innocent business.

Innocent in the sense it wasn't responsible for what Monsieur Merwilee sold through the front building, at least.

The corridors of Abbey Hall were narrow in the space-saving way of an old underground building, before Paris Underground had been excavated properly for the sake of the trains in the '50s. It was cold, too, colder than its location alone should account for. Tarvek hunched his shoulders and wished he'd brought a shawl. He wondered if Holzfäller, running his parallel con on the west gate, was feeling equally miserable.

"Right through here," the guard told him, and pulled open a door to a hallway barely wider than a strong man's shoulders, smelling faintly of cleaning chemicals. 

Okay, time to hurry this up. Tarvek drew himself up, with a look of faint horror. "In there?"

The guard's eye's narrowed. "What, you've never used the safety lockers before? Number nineteen, go on."

"Not in the _dark!_"

From the look on the guard's face she had all kinds of words for a man afraid of the dark, but she stepped inside to go through the little alcove for a battery lantern anyway. Tarvek took the opportunity to kick the door shut.

"Hey, what -" she cried out, and she would have been opening the door again, except Tarvek had pulled the truncheon out of his handbag - he really did hope the lady he borrowed this from was on her way to a _friendly_ customer - and jammed it through the handle and against the frame. That wouldn't hold more than a few seconds if she kicked hard enough. He braced his knee against it while he hastily dug through - ahah, no need even for a chemical weld. The handcuffs jammed nicely behind the doorframe and closed on the handle with a satisfying click, and Tarvek yanked back the truncheon and ran; he'd bought maybe three minutes' lead.

He skidded around three corners at high speed before he heard the pounding of booted feet - two sets, pursuit and prey, Holzfäller must be having a harder time. Hah. He stopped next to the next corner, took a deep breath, and there's Holzfäller skidding past and there was an angry man with an enormous moustache who didn't notice the outstretched foot and went down hard to the flagstones with a bone-rattling thud. 

Holzfäller managed to skid to a stop a few meters away. "Thanks," he gasps.

"You're welcome." The guard was struggling to his knees. Tarvek stomped on his ribs and he fell back down, wheezing. "Did you get -"

"Northeast corner. I'll show you."

Tarvek made a theatrical simper. "Lead the way, darling."

A very peculiar expression crossed Gilgamesh's face like a cloudshadow. But then it was gone, vanished in the familiar scowl.

The storage room in the northeast corner was behind a metalclad door with a lock that took Tarvek most of two seconds to get past, just long enough for Holzfäller to look annoyed. Inside it was cold enough their breath showed up in the air. Tarvek could barely hold back an appreciative whistle at all the gently glowing flasks. Holzfäller wasn't so discreet; he breathed a gentle, "Wow. Merwilee doesn't mess around, does he?"

"Merwilee doesn't bother employing better guards than Abbey Hall," Tarvek pointed out. "I don't think he really understands the business."

From the way Holzfäller's mouth hung open he was trying to think of an answer. And failing. His mouth snapped shut, and he shook his head, and after a few seconds he said, "Got any more of that pure polyhydroxide?"

"Don't need it." Tarvek made a sweeping gesture. This gown was wonderful for sweeping gestures. The bell sleeves just demanded it. He felt like he should spend more nights as a lady-of-fashion just to have the excuse. "Élan lumineux, meet flourohexaline and tricholric acid." How nice of Merwilee to label his bootleg laboratory supplies. "But be quick about it. We still have to escape."

The light in Holzfäller's eyes was downright frightening. Or would have been, if Tarvek weren't a spark himself, intimately familiar with the sudden bright certainty of fugue. Something went tight in his chest at how easily and simply Gilgamesh slipped into it, as if he had no reason not to, as if letting his Spark take the place of his common sense weren't an absurd vulnerability. "Hold the door," he said. 

How very trusting. Tarvek palmed the truncheon, took up his place by the closed door, and waited for the explosion.

\--

Gil felt the tail end of fugue clawing at his conscious mind even as he tossed the empty flask of reagent to the floor. The flask of _élan lumineux_ was already starting to shiver. "Come on," he said, and mentally stomped on the bit of his mind pointing out how much bigger an explosion he could make with a few more catalysts, didn't he want to breach the surface? Not tonight. The point if this expedition was to eliminate Monsieur Merwilee's stock, not drive Abbey Hall completely out of business.

The part of his mind pointing out his original objective had been to get information, and this was somewhere between above-and-beyond and dangerous overreach, he carefully ignored.

Especially with Sturmvoraus guarding the door. Or rather, throwing open, and yelling, "Blast radius!" Gil got the hint. He practically dove through, picked _south_ at random and started to run. 

It was the right direction. They took two turns at a dead sprint, passed a door half-splintered as if someone inside were trying to kick their way out, and quite suddenly they were back on the street. Well, back in the public corridor; it wasn't really a street down here, not wide enough for vehicles. Gil slammed the iron-bound doors with the discreet brass plaque proclaiming them Abbey Hall, and Tarvek grabbed his hand before he could keep running. "We don't -"

The explosion was loud, but low, a giant thump as if the foot of a clank the size of the Awful Tower had descended on the northeast corner of Abbey Hall.

"Yes we do," Gil said, and tightened his hand on Sturmvoraus's before he took off, practically dragging the other man behind, because it would have been conspicuous even by Paris standards to throw Sturmvoraus over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

He slowed to a jog once they were back in a corridor with people in it, mostly flooding toward the noise in the traditional triumph of curiosity over sense, and by the time he spotted a secluded nook between a wine cellar and a booth advertising Underground Tours, there was nobody to notice them slipping away. 

Tarvek had, amazingly, come through all that with his makeup intact. He pulled the cochette's hairclip out of his wig with a too-sharp tug and a scowl, and stuffed it in the big velvet handbag. "Post office," he muttered. "What time is it?"

Gil was reaching for his own pocket-watch before he remembered he'd left it at home. Why had he - oh, right, his original plan, the one Sturmvoraus had invited himself into and then blown to pieces with his little catalyst trick, had involved stealth, and the watch was very obviously a spark's watch after the mess with Professor Zardilev last month. "Not much past eleven," he said instead. "Plenty of time before last post. Don't you have a watch?"

"Not that goes with this corset I don't."

That made sense, as much as Sturmvoraus ever made sense. Gil stuffed his hands in his pockets and tried to look nonchalant. "Three down, none to go? Or are you making a night of it?"

"It's not worth going after the alley traders. Maybe some of them will take the chance to start working in volume. More carefully." His smile had very little real humour in it. "You can go back to the Island of Monkey Girls with a clear conscience."

It wasn't worth protesting that the night's little adventure had been Sturmvoraus's idea, was it? Gil's brain spun in circles for a second as he tried to think of a comeback. Somehow what came out was, "Have you had dinner yet?"

"What?"

Might as well run with it. "I havn't. And you were in the same late seminar, so unless you can bend time you barely had to change. We'll get crêpes. Come on, we shouldn't go carousing on an empty stomach."

He was gratified to see the horrified purple on Sturmvoraus's face even beneath the layers of makeup. "I am not going _carousing_ with you on any kind of stomach! Some of us still have a few scraps of dignity! And it's Thursday, in case you've forgotten!"

"So, just the crêpes, then?"

In the middle of his still-red face Tarvek's expression transmuted to a smirk. "Fine. It's a date."

It really was this time, wasn't it, and now it was Gil's turn to blush.

\--

They went to the surface to send off the handbag, to reduce the chances of someone spotting them and making a scene, and stayed there. They found a little crépe joint tucked between a haberdashery and a lamp repair store. The other customers all looked drunk; the counter girl looked about twelve and spoke French with an accent, and the cook was a wizened Asian man who apparently spoke no French at all, but who looked gratified when Holzfäller called out to him, haltingly, in what sounded like Chinese, and laughed at whatever it was he said. Gil's crêpes arrived with extra honey.

It would have been more sensible to lose him in the crowd in the Black Market.

Not until he'd devoured three-quarters of his plate did Holzfäller tilt his head to look at the pear-and-walnut atrocity he'd ordered on Tarvek's behalf. "So you never said why you were out tonight," he announced, as if they weren't in a shop full of people.

Two could play that game. "To save you from your own stupidity, apparently," he snapped. "Did you even have a plan?"

"Sure. Improvise."

"_Improvise_ is _not a plan!_"

"Works for me." Gilgamesh was staring wistfully at the space over Tarvek's head. "Someone told me once," he said, "that it's a mistake to plan too much, because then when your enemy does something unexpected, you'll waste time trying to get back to the plan instead of just doing what needs to be done."

"And did this wise person have any words on the importance of knowing what in the nine hells is going on?" That wasn't fair. Holzfäller was smarter than he looked, and somehow he always knew just enough to disable the doomsday device. 

"Well, someone has to do the intelligence work. Are you eating that or are you just going to mash it to bits with your fork?"

Tarvek sighed and switched their plates. 

Holzfäller was still giving him a funny look, for all he dug into Tarvek's dinner with apparent relish. He'd taken three bites before he spoke again. "The fig ish -" He stopped. Swallowed, and Tarvek really shouldn't be watching his throat, but it had been a long night. Began again. "The thing is, the Master is going to be furious. This whole evening was horrible overreach."

"And yet I didn't notice you refusing to help me at any point."

"Would you have just gone home and gone to bed if I did?"

"No," Tarvek pointed out with all the vicious cheer he could muster, and took a delicate forkful of Gil's too-honeyed leftovers. "On the other hand, you could have told the Master you had no idea who was responsible. You'd never met Tinka before. Very plausibly deniable."

He was hoping for a blush and he got it. "I did know, though," Holzfäller muttered. "Your voice. Uh. Am I likely to run into Tinka again?"

How someone can be known in the dressing rooms of half the cabaret girls on the Rue des Grenouilles and still hesitate at the idea of being friends with a lady-of-fashion - it didn't make sense, so that left the alternate hypothesis, that Holzfäller just had something against Tarvek personally. Well. "Not with _your_ social schedule."

Holzfäller's blush didn't dissipate, but neither did his glower. 

Their plates were almost empty before he spoke again. "Shall I walk you home?"

"Oh, please." Tarvek took some delight in flipping his hair over his shoulder. His usual hair wasn't long enough for that. "I'm not that kind of girl."

\--


End file.
